The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (119 page)

Monte Cristo made a sign to invite his guests to go with him. Mme de Villefort got up, he did the same and everyone else followed suit. Villefort and Danglars, however, remained for an instant as if glued to their chairs, exchanging a look that was silent and icy cold.

‘Did you hear?’ said Mme Danglars.

‘We must go,’ Villefort replied, getting up and offering her his arm.

Everyone was already scattered around the house, driven by curiosity, because they assumed that the visit would not be confined to the single bedroom but would allow them at the same time to wander around the rest of this hovel that Monte Cristo had transformed into a palace. So everyone rushed through one door after another. Monte Cristo waited for the two latecomers and, when they had gone through in their turn, took up the rear with a smile which, if they could have understood its meaning, would
have terrified the guests much more than the empty room they were about to enter.

They began by going through the apartments: the bedrooms, which were done out in the Oriental manner with no beds except divans and cushions and no furniture except pipes and swords; the drawing-rooms hung with the finest old master paintings; and the boudoirs in Chinese materials, with fantastical colours, extravagant designs and marvellous silks. Then, finally, they reached the famous room itself.

There was nothing unusual about it except that, although it was growing dark, there were no lights here and, unlike all the other rooms, it had not been refurbished. These two things in themselves were enough to give it a gloomy air.

‘Brrr!’ said Mme de Villefort. ‘It certainly is spooky.’

Mme Danglars tried to stammer a few words that no one heard, and various remarks were passed, all amounting to the opinion that the room with the red damask was truly sinister.

‘Isn’t it, indeed?’ said Monte Cristo. ‘Look how oddly that bed is placed, with its sombre, blood-red awning. And those two portraits, in pastel, which have faded because of the damp: do their pallid lips and staring eyes not seem to say: “I saw what happened!” ‘

Villefort was ashen. Mme Danglars slumped into a chaise-longue beside the fireplace.

‘Oh, dear!’ Mme de Villefort said. ‘You are brave sitting there: it could be the very place where the crime was committed!’

Mme Danglars leapt to her feet.

‘And that,’ said Monte Cristo, ‘is not all.’

‘What more is there?’ asked Debray, aware of the effect this was having on Mme Danglars.

‘Yes, how much more?’ asked Danglars. ‘I must confess that so far I can’t see a lot in it. How about you, Monsieur Cavalcanti?’

‘Well, we have Ugolino’s tower
³
in Pisa, Tasso’s prison in Ferrara and the bedroom of Francesca and Paolo in Rimini,’ the Italian replied.

‘Yes, but you don’t have this little staircase,’ said Monte Cristo, opening a door concealed behind the hangings. ‘Look at it and tell me what you think.’

‘What a sinister style of stairway!’ Château-Renaud said with a laugh.

‘I don’t know if that Chian wine is conducive to melancholy,’ Debray said, ‘but the fact is that I am starting to see this house in a grim light.’

As for Morrel, ever since the mention of Valentine’s dowry, he had remained glum and silent.

‘Can you imagine,’ Monte Cristo continued, ‘an Othello or some Abbé de Ganges, going down this staircase step by step, on a dark and stormy night, carrying some grim burden which he is anxious to conceal from the eyes of men, if not from those of God!’

Mme Danglars almost fainted in the arms of Villefort, who was obliged to support himself against the wall.

‘Good Lord, Madame!’ Debray exclaimed. ‘What has come over you? How pale you are!’

‘What’s come over her?’ said Mme de Villefort. ‘What’s come over her is quite simply that Monsieur de Monte Cristo is telling us these ghastly stories, no doubt hoping to make us die of fright.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Villefort. ‘Look, Count, you’re terrifying the ladies.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Debray whispered again to Mme Danglars.

‘Nothing, nothing,’ she answered, making an effort to control her feelings. ‘I just need a little air.’

‘Would you like to go down to the garden?’ Debray asked, offering his arm to Mme Danglars and leading the way towards the hidden staircase.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No. I’d rather stay here.’

‘Is that so, Madame?’ said Monte Cristo. ‘Is this terror serious?’

‘No, Monsieur,’ said Mme Danglars. ‘But you have a way of hypothesizing that gives an appearance of reality to illusions.’

‘Good Lord, yes!’ Monte Cristo said with a smile. ‘All this is a figment of the imagination. Why could one not just as well imagine this room to be the good and respectable bedroom of the mother of a family. The bed with its purple awning, like a bed visited by the goddess Lucina
⁴
… and the mysterious staircase as a passage down which the doctor and the nursemaid might go, so as not to disturb the young mother’s restorative slumber, or even the father, carrying the sleeping child?’

This time, instead of being reassured by the evocation of this tender tableau, Mme Danglars gave a groan and fainted completely away.

‘Madame Danglars is ill,’ stammered Villefort. ‘Perhaps we should take her to her carriage.’

‘How frightful!’ said Monte Cristo. ‘And I didn’t bring my flask.’

‘I have mine,’ said Mme de Villefort, giving the count a flask full of a red liquid similar to the one that had so benefited Edouard when the count tried it on him. He took it from Mme de Villefort’s hands, raising an eyebrow.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘On your instructions, I tried it.’

‘Successfully?’

‘I think so.’

Mme Danglars had been taken into the next room. Monte Cristo let a drop of the red liquid fall on her lips and she revived. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘what a terrible dream!’

Villefort grasped her wrist to let her know that it had not been a dream. They looked for M. Danglars, but he was not in the mood for poetical reverie and had gone down into the garden, where he was talking to the elder Cavalcanti about a scheme to build a railway from Leghorn to Florence.

Monte Cristo appeared desperate. He took Mme Danglars’ arm and led her down into the garden, where they found M. Danglars taking coffee between the two Cavalcantis.

‘Tell me, Madame,’ Monte Cristo said, ‘did I really terrify you?’

‘No, Monsieur, but you know our impressions are sometimes amplified by whatever happens to be our state of mind.’

Villefort forced a laugh and said: ‘So, you understand, a supposition may be enough, or a chimera…’

‘Even so,’ Monte Cristo told them, ‘believe it or not, I am convinced that a crime took place in that room.’

‘Beware!’ said Mme de Villefort. ‘We have the crown prosecutor with us.’

‘So we do,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘Very well, since that is the case, I shall take advantage of it to make my statement.’

‘Your statement?’ said Villefort.

‘Precisely, in front of witnesses.’

‘All very interesting, this,’ said Debray. ‘If there really has been a crime, it should help our digestion no end.’

‘There was a crime,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘Come this way, gentlemen. Come, Monsieur de Villefort. For the statement to be valid it must be made before the proper authorities.’

He took Villefort’s arm and, with Mme Danglars’ arm beneath the other, led the crown prosecutor under the plane-tree to where the shadows were deepest. All the other guests followed.

‘Now then,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘Here, at this very spot’ (he stamped his foot on the ground) ‘in order to revive these old trees, I got my men to dig in some leafmould. Well, when they were digging, they uncovered a chest, or the ironwork from a chest, in the midst of which was the skeleton of a new-born child. I hope you don’t consider that an illusion?’

He felt Mme Danglars’ arm stiffen and a tremor go through Villefort’s wrist.

‘A new-born child?’ Debray answered. ‘By Jove! This sounds to me as if it’s getting serious.’

‘Well, I was right,’ said Château-Renaud, ‘when I said just now that houses had a soul and a face like people and that their innermost beings were reflected in their physiognomy. This house was sad because it was full of remorse. It was full of remorse because it was concealing a crime.’

‘Who says it was a crime?’ Villefort asked, making one final effort.

‘What! A child buried alive in a garden! Is that not a crime?’ Monte Cristo exclaimed. ‘What other name do you have for such an action, crown prosecutor?’

‘Who says that he was buried alive?’

‘Why bury him there if he was dead? This garden has never been a cemetery.’

‘What do they do to infanticides in this country?’ Major Cavalcanti asked innocently.

‘Huh! They simply cut off their heads,’ Danglars replied.

‘Oh! They cut off their heads,’ said Cavalcanti.

‘I think so… That’s right, isn’t it, Monsieur de Villefort?’ Monte Cristo asked.

‘Yes, Count,’ he answered, in a voice that was hardly human.

Monte Cristo could see that the two people for whose benefit he had devised this scene could not bear any more of it; so, not wishing to push them too far, he said: ‘But, gentlemen, I think we are forgetting the coffee!’ And he led his guests over to the table which had been set in the middle of the lawn.

‘The truth is, Monsieur le Comte,’ said Mme Danglars, ‘I am ashamed to admit my weakness, but all those frightful stories have
been too much for me. I beg you, let me sit down.’ She slumped into a chair.

Monte Cristo bowed and went over to Mme de Villefort. ‘I think Madame Danglars needs your flask again,’ he said. But before Mme de Villefort could go over to her friend, the crown prosecutor had already whispered in Mme Danglars’ ear: ‘I must speak to you.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Where?’

‘In my office… At the law courts, if you prefer. That could be the safest place.’

‘I shall be there.’

At that moment Mme de Villefort came up.

‘Thank you, my dear,’ said Mme Danglars, trying to smile. ‘It’s nothing. I’m quite better.’

The evening went on. Mme de Villefort expressed a desire to return to Paris, which Mme Danglars had not yet dared to do, despite the obvious discomfort that she felt. So, at his wife’s request, M. de Villefort was the first to make a move to depart. He offered Mme Danglars a place in his landau, so that his wife could look after her. As for M. Danglars, he paid no attention to what was going on, being engrossed in a most absorbing conversation about industrial matters with M. Cavalcanti.

While Monte Cristo was asking Mme de Villefort for her flask, he had noticed M. de Villefort go over to Mme Danglars and, judging by the situation, also guessed what was said between them, even though Villefort had spoken so softly that Mme Danglars herself could hardly hear him.

He made no objection, but let Morrel, Debray and Château-Renaud leave on horseback, while the two ladies got into M. de Villefort’s landau. Danglars, for his part, was increasingly delighted with the elder Cavalcanti, whom he invited to join him in his coupé.

As for Andrea Cavalcanti, he took his tilbury, which was waiting
at the door with a groom, dressed in an extravagant version of the English fashion, holding the enormous iron-grey horse and standing on tiptoe. Andrea had said little during dinner, precisely because he was an intelligent lad who was afraid of saying something ridiculous in front of these rich and powerful guests among whom his anxious eyes had perhaps been disturbed to find a crown prosecutor. After that, he had been monopolized by M. Danglars who, after a quick glance at the stiff-necked old major and his rather shy son, had weighed up this evidence in the light of Monte Cristo’s hospitality and concluded that he was dealing with some nabob who had come to Paris to ‘finish’ his only son by introducing him to society.

Consequently he had looked with odious complacency at the huge diamond adorning the major’s little finger – for the major, as a cautious man of the world, had been afraid that some accident might befall his banknotes and had rapidly converted them into an object of value. Then, after dinner, still on the pretext of industry and travel, he had questioned father and son on their style of life. The pair, knowing that one of them was to have his credit of 48,000 francs, when they arrived, with Danglars’ bank, and the other his annual credit of 50,000
livres
, had both been charming and full of conviviality towards the banker. Indeed, their gratitude felt so urgent a need to express itself that they would even have shaken hands with Danglars’ servants, if they had not managed to restrain themselves.

One thing in particular increased Danglars’ respect – one might almost say veneration – for Cavalcanti. The latter, obedient to Horace’s principle
nil admirari
,
¹
had been satisfied as we saw with demonstrating his erudition by naming the lake from which one gets the best lampreys. Then he had eaten his share of the same without uttering another word. Danglars jumped to the conclusion that this kind of feast was quite familiar to the illustrious descendant of the Cavalcantis, who probably dined at his home in Lucca on trout from Switzerland and lobster from Brittany brought to him by the same means as the count had used to fetch lampreys from Lake Fusaro and sturgeon from the Volga. So, when Cavalcanti announced: ‘Tomorrow, Monsieur, I shall have the honour of visiting you on a matter of business,’ he responded with a marked air of amiability.